KCRW's Martini Shot

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about impossible it is for some people to remember that they have enough stuff, enough of everything. And by some people I mean, me. But maybe not just me.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about what happened when my tailor died and his shop was rebooted and remodeled and was better in almost every way except one: it was missing something, like a lot of reboots.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I hypothetically and with names changed, explore some of the ways writers get scripts written, from Adderall to ten micrograms of LSD, everything but just sitting down and doing the work.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I tell the story of the older actress who wouldn’t play a grandmother, because she didn’t think the audience saw her as the grandmother type. She was eighty. And in real life, a great grandmother.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about that thing where when you go someplace foreign and you buy something you think you’re going to wear back home, but, you’re never going to wear it back home.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I struggle to wedge myself into child’s pose during yoga, while the woman next to me ignores the teacher entirely and just stretches out. It’s a lightbulb moment for me.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot, the first episode of my manifesto on how to get better television. It starts a little slow, like a lot of shows on premium cable and streaming services, but stick with it.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I tell the story of the young comedy writer who has dinner with the older comedy writer, and the young comedy writer has the temerity to say something funny. Bad move.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about the time I was in Gori, Georgia and I sat in Stalin’s old reading chair and it was pretty weird, and then I twist that into an analogy about the entertainment business, as I usually do.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I tell the story of two actors up for the same part who interpreted the character very differently, and what happened after that. Spoiler alert: they both got the job. Which almost never happens.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I use a very grim battlefield metaphor to describe the new Best Popular Movie Oscar award, coming in 2019. It’s a little dark, but then so is the entertainment business.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about Crazy Rich Asians and Black Panther and the reason the oldest trade paper in Hollywood is called Variety, because Variety is good, the more of it the better.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about the rule of skinny dipping — you don’t want to be the first one to strip down and jump in the pool. You want to be fourth or fifth. Depending on the attractiveness of the crowd. It’s a metaphor.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I use a very big and weird word — mam-ihlapi-natapai — a word from the Tierra del Fuego which means the look shared by two people, each wishing that the other would initiate something that they both desire but which neither wants to begin. Which is every day in Hollywood.

Next week, we kill ourselves on a scooter. For KCRW, this is Rob Long. TEASER: This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about the sexy and irresistible topic of corporate governance and the lack of it in the entertainment business. Edgy, I know.

This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I give you the secret code to undermining every writer in your life. Just listen to whatever idea they’re working on and say cheerfully, Oh yeah, they did that.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I talk about the most painful and psychologically damaging moment in a show business career, and that’s waiting at the studio guard shed for the gate arm to rise. Even when it does, it’s harrowing.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I buy one of those organizer apps to make a to-do list of things I want to put into my other organizer app and I keep track of all of it using a notebook and a pen. So yeah, I’m writing.

This is Rob Long, and on today’s Martini Shot I discuss the 1938 discovery by a psychologist that people are at their most emotionally vulnerable when they’re eating, which is why everyone in show business is always trying to take you to lunch.